Happy Independence Day!

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In honor of the day and the fact that in Michigan we’re not allowed to play with any fireworks that do more than sparkle we proudly present the following firework related bit of flash animation: Lady Liberty Fireworks.

4 thoughts on “Happy Independence Day!”

  2. Les, I hope you don’t mind if I paste here the following piece I posted to http://www.struggle.hibernation9.com. I am including a response it received, as well. I was inspired in part by much of what I read here. Thanks, and please excuse my imperfect writing style. I’m not as good at this as you or some of your post-ers are. While there are many other sites out there which allow feedback, you often combine pertinent information with a healthy dose of ironic humor. If you feel moved to visit the site and weigh in, that would be great. Or I could transfer any comments over to that site in relation to this post. I would of course do so only on a comment by comment transfer with permission basis. What do you, or your readers think?

    07.05.2003

    Celebrating the Fourth of July this year just didn

  3. Brock, I think you’ve done an excellent job of writing in this small essay and I’m glad that you decided to post it here. I can’t promise that I’ll have time to stop by the original site and chime in, but it seems to me you’re doing a pretty good job of holding your own. While the respondent is correct that the phrase “Separation of Church and State” does not appear in the Constitution that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the intent of the Founding Fathers. In fact, the concept itself was outlined by President Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury (Conn.) Baptist Association in 1802 in trying to explain the purpose of the First Amendment. The man considered to be the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote in a letter in 1819 ”[T]he number, the industry and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church and state.” Furthermore:

    As eminent church-state scholar Leo Pfeffer notes in his book, Church, State and Freedom, “It is true, of course, that the phrase ‘separation of church and state’ does not appear in the Constitution. But it was inevitable that some convenient term should come into existence to verbalize a principle so clearly and widely held by the American people….[T]he right to a fair trial is generally accepted to be a constitutional principle; yet the term ‘fair trial’ is not found in the Constitution. To bring the point even closer home, who would deny that ‘religious liberty’ is a constitutional principle? Yet that phrase too is not in the Constitution. The universal acceptance which all these terms, including ‘separation of church and state,’ have received in America would seem to confirm rather than disparage their reality as basic American democratic principles.”—11 Myths About Church and State.

    There are other points in the response you received that I would take issue with, but I’m out of time at the moment. Perhaps I will swing by that site and check in after all.

  4. Heh heh! I hope so. I’m kinda hoping for your talent and intelligence to show up there. (Please feel free to) go get ‘em Les. Eric or anyone else, too. Thanks Les, for the kind words.

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